The Tears of the Angel
by October
Summary: A RommieDylan adventure! When a space creature attacks the Andromeda, Dylan and Rommie are transported to a distant world. Surrounded by ghosts, their resources dwindling, something happens to change their relationship. M rating just to make sure.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: The Tears of the Angel

AUTHOR: October

SERIES: Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda

GENRES: Adventure, Action, Romance

PAIRING: Rommie/Dylan

RATING: M (for intense space battles and a little bit of non-explicit, euphemistic sex) Using movie ratings, I would rate this somewhere between PG and PG-13

DISCLAIMER: I don't own "Andromeda." I only wrote this for fun. No profit was made.

SUMMARY: For Dylan/Rommie fans! A space creature disables the Andromeda and Dylan and Rommie are transported to a haunted mine on a distant world. Will their friends find them in time? And what are Trance's battle tactics?

NOTES: I don't yet own the DVD sets. (Just ordered the first season but it hasn't arrived yet!) So I have only seen most of these episodes once, and some of them, a long time ago. My memory may be at fault. Andromeda the ship seems to be visualized larger in seasons 1 and 2, so being fascinated with her changes in scale, I emphasize her size. I believe the avatar of The Wrath of Achilles is named Ryan... hope I remembered right and did not mix up my ships! Other minor details and technical objects might not be accurate. All terminology I got either from watching the show, or just making it up on the spot ; So, fellow fanficcers, don't use this as a writer's reference! Please email me to correct any major errors and I will happily fix whatever's wrong!

DEDICATION: This story is dedicated to the exquisitely beautiful Lexa Doig, who was cast perfectly as Andromeda.

1.

When the Andromeda Ascendant arrived at Shivaloka on her rescue mission, there was jubilation in the streets. This beautiful planet, with its tropical climate, its great temples and its rare flora and fauna (it was the only world where elephants still thrived) had been recently attacked by a spacefaring predator. While the planetary defense systems had managed to deter it, the panicked locals lost no time in contacting the Commonwealth, who in turn had contacted Andromeda and her captain, Dylan Hunt. At the time he had accepted the mission, it had seemed to him one that they could easily handle, and he had allowed most of the crew to shuttle down to enjoy the party the locals were throwing in their honor. In retrospect, that was a very good thing, because it had prevented a great quantity of casualties.

Dylan, Trance, Beka and Harper had been touring the Golden Temple in the capital city of New Nadia. Dylan was particularly interested in a legend which was illustrated in a huge mosaic in the temple floor. The tour guide explained that it depicted the monster Rahu who had eaten the moon.

Dylan led the little group out of doors to call Andromeda. He was intending to ask her to run orbital simulations, to see if she could successfully insert that hypothetical moon into the Shiva system; but the monster, Rahu, had not given him the time. "Hey, Boss," Harper said sharply, pointing to the heavens. "What's going on up there?"

Dylan looked, and froze in his tracks. A veil of green, a wavy aurora, exploded slowly across the daylight sky. It was beautiful, but he recognized it for what it was-- the byproducts of a massive plasma discharge hitting Shivaloka's atmosphere. Andromeda was firing her railguns. He tapped his comlink. "Andromeda! Report!"

"Dylan, it's the creature, and it's just taken a piece out of my starboard side. Multiple casualties. Requesting backup."

"Damn! All right. Drop some slip couriers, wherever you have to. Ask for whatever you need. I'm coming up." He turned to Harper, Trance and Beka. "Come on, people. My ship is in trouble and there's not enough time to find Rhade."

They were just entering the Maru at a run when Dylan received an urgent cry for help. "Andromeda?"

Her slipstream core was damaged. She could not escape her attacker.

Dylan commanded the Maru to launch. The old cargo drone pulled away from Shivaloka at bonebreaking speed, its inertial dampers adjusting in not-so-smooth increments as the engines went into overdrive.

"What could it be?" said Harper. "What is so big it can make a snack out of Andromeda? It would have to be the size of a planet."

"Well, the legend says it ate the moon," Beka replied.

"I don't care how big it is," said Dylan grimly. "Nothing attacks my ship and gets away with it."

Andromeda's AI appeared on the Maru's cockpit screen. "Dylan, it's an organic identical to the planet-eater we encountered before, but more massive. It seems to be attracted to my materials."

"A concentrated source of food," he muttered. "Hit it with everything you've got, Rommie!"

"I have, but no effect." AI flickered, then reappeared. "It's attacking again."

"Keep hitting it. And broadcast as loud as you can on all spectrums and frequencies. Maybe you can frighten it."

"Hey Dylan," said Beka. "I know you've got some nova bombs stashed somewhere."

"No, Beka!" cried Trance. "It's too close to the planet! Everyone down there would die!"

"Trance is right," said Dylan. "We can't use them. Rommie? Rommie!"

AI was in visible pain. "Dylan. I've been eviscerated. I'm losing the crew."

Dylan was now standing in the cockpit. "Order the remaining crew to abandon ship."

"Acknowledged. Dylan. I recommend you use extreme caution. Do not approach me. Do not approach!"

"Andromeda, we're coming and we're going to save you as well as your crew. Where is your avatar?" He said the last with a sudden sharp pang in his gut.

Avatar's voice. "I'm in the slipcore preparing to eject it. Dylan, I do not recommend--" the screen suddenly fell silent.

"Rommie? Andromeda!"

"Look!" said Beka, pointing.

The Maru had climbed above the last shreds of atmosphere and onto the scene of battle. Debris was everywhere. Beka pushed Dylan to one side as she slipped into the pilot's cradle. "Excuse me, but someone has to steer us-- Oh!" She jerked the Maru sideways, just missing a massive chunk of twisted metal that would have flattened the cargo ship.

"Oh, no..." Trance indicated a slowly spinning object just above them. It was huge, larger than most space stations. "One of Andromeda's slipfoils, Dylan."

"There they are." Dylan tapped the window and all heads turned in his direction.

The Andromeda Ascendant was approaching rapidly off the Maru's port side, and her attacker swam beyond her. It was beautiful, translucent and glowing and definitely the same type of creature that they had barely succeeded in killing once before-- a species that the Perseids had subsequently named "Andromedii nauticus." There was only one difference. This one was much larger than the previous one -- indeed, as Harper had inadvertently guessed, it was the size of a planet.

Beka turned. "Dylan, I really hate to say it, but this is a no-go. There is no way we can kill that thing."

"Oh my God," breathed Harper. "Look at Andromeda." His face had gone white.

The great ship hung in space like a broken moon. Dylan saw that "eviscerated" was the right word. Andromeda's metallic guts were literally hanging out of a massive gash. Miles long, it was the clean slash of a predator's tooth and it had nearly torn the ship in half. As she swung slowly around to keep facing her attacker, she was spilling a swarm of tiny objects from the rent in her side. Slipfighters, Dylan realized, but unmanned. They drifted like a cloud of gnats, then scattered in every direction like a school of frightened fish. What she was doing? Trying to create a diversion? She was sinking, still spilling her guts, the gravity of the planet pulling her in as her enemy circled her. Dylan realized Andromeda was mortally wounded.

"Beka," he said. "Take the Maru in front of that thing. Right up its snout. Maybe we can lure it away."

"Gotcha," she said, kicking the cargo drone's engines back into maximum output. The Eureka Maru tore through the debris field, swerving as she continued to accelerate. Trance shrieked as they barely missed another large piece of Andromeda.

"Rommie! Can you hear me? How long until you eject the slipcore?"

The screen cleared and this time it was Avatar's face, tracked on camera. Her hair was flying wildly in the wind of depressurization and her eyes were flashing with battle fury. "Unknown. My framework has been twisted beyond all tolerances. The core will not eject. I'm working on it."

"Hang on, people!" shouted Beka. "We're approaching the creature!"

Dylan grabbed the cockpit railing. "Closer, Beka!"

"This close enough?" The Maru shuddered as its frame encountered the resistance of the residual atmosphere surrounding the monster.

"OK. Trance, fire everything we've got down that thing's throat!"

"Firing!"

From his vantage point behind Trance, Harper clearly saw the powerful plasma missiles impact on the creature's outer shell. The animal did not react; instead, it continued on its course to once again intercept the Andromeda.

"Pull up!"

"Pulling," Beka said between clenched teeth, bringing the Maru out of Rahu's atmosphere.

"It's going after Andromeda!" shouted Harper. "It's going for the kill!"

"Dylan," AI interjected. "I have received a courier transmission from the Wrath of Achilles. He's headed here now."

"There's not enough time, Rommie. Have you got any maneuvering capability left?"

"Almost none."

"Use what you have! Back away from that thing!" The monster lunged toward his wounded ship. Andromeda, attempting to reverse, spun into an uncontrolled roll as her engines failed. Then Rahu was on her like a blue cloud. A flash of light, a piercing scream of agony shearing across the radio spectrum, and Rahu was off again, circling like some unimaginable shark.

Andromeda was still locked in a spin, now missing her other slipfoil. Avatar came onscreen. "Dylan!" she screamed. She was clinging to the catwalk in the slipcore. "Stay away from me!"

Dylan slammed both fists into the cockpit glass. "Rommie!"

"I can help you save her, Dylan," Trance said suddenly behind him.

He rounded on her. "Why can't you move the whole ship like you did before in the parallel universe?"

"I am not allowed to interfere like that again," she said sternly. "But I can help you save Rommie, if you hurry."

"What do I do?"

"Just go to her. If you take her hand, I'll know when you've found her."

"Caught a slipfighter," Beka announced as the Maru rocked slightly from the impact.

Dylan ran for the fighter. He didn't take time to don a spacesuit, just grabbed some supplemental oxygen, landed in the cockpit and sent the skittish little craft flying back to its mother. As he drew near the stricken warship, he gasped again at the extent of her injuries. Her side had been ripped open from bow to stern as if from some cosmic fang. Her upper blades were bleeding gas. Escape pods were everywhere. "Beka! Harper!" he snapped. "Start catching those pods!" He barely heard the acknowledgement as he quickly calculated Andromeda's spin. "Rommie! Can you synchronize us?"

"No, Dylan. What are you doing?"

"Saving you. Get your avatar out of the slipstream core and send her to me. Hurry!" Grabbing the fine maneuvering controls, he started the little fighter spinning, first slowly, then a bit faster, visually synchronizing with Andromeda's helpless rotation. "OK," he muttered between clenched teeth, and nudged the slipfighter forward into an intact cargo bay. Andromeda's autonomic nervous system was still working here and the bay doors shut. There was an agonizing moment while he waited for any pressure that might be found. "Andromeda! Andromeda! Can you hear me?"

The AI was barely functioning, flickering in and out. "Dylan," she said. "Get out while you can. I've downloaded--" and the rest was garbled static.

He sprang down from the fighter. Gravity was still working, but it was built to withstand almost anything except total destruction. There was some air still left, but it was thin. He headed for the slipstream core at a dead run, but halted suddenly as he saw a wounded figure on the floor ahead. It was a Than crewmember, unconscious and bleeding, but alive. "Damn!" His muscles aching from the low atmospheric pressure, he lifted his charge and ran back the way he had come, retracing his steps. He loaded the crewman in the slipfighter and shut the cockpit. "You!" he said, addressing the machine. "Take him out!"

The fighter came to life and as he stepped back out of harms' way, it took off on autopilot, screaming out of the hangar doors. "Got a live one coming your way, Beka!" he yelled over the comlink.

"I see him, Dylan," she acknowledged. "Dylan! Rahu looks like it's coming around for another bite!"

Dylan staggered. He broke out the supplemental oxygen, clenching it between his teeth. New strength flooded quickly through him and once again he headed in the direction of the core. Andromeda's monorails would be down-- they were always the first thing to go in an emergency-- and it would be a long run from here on foot. He started off. "Rommie. Where are you?"

"Dylan! Ryan's here!"

----

A flash of light slashed across the bridge of the Eureka Maru as the Wrath of Achilles came out of slipstream dangerously close to the Andromeda. The monstrous warship swung quickly around, surveying the Shiva system. Its radio transmission came through loud and clear. "Andromeda! Eureka Maru! This is Ryan. I'm here... and I see it!"

The appearance of the second ship had caused the monster to pause for a moment in its ominous circling. It hovered, considering. Then it lunged. The Wrath of Achilles roared forward to meet it. Ever after, the terrible confrontation would be known as the Battle of Shivaloka.

----

Dylan burst through a cloud of corrosive gas, eyes shut, breath held, knowing his ship so well that this gave no hesitation to his steps. Closed bulkheads gave way before him automatically at his presence. Then he was in the clear again and could breathe and see. Outside there was a battle raging. Beka and Harper were on the comlink, their voices shrill with excitement and terror as they described what was happening. Ryan had rushed the monster, all cannons firing point-blank. Rahu was giving ground.

Dylan was forced to pause for a moment, resting with his hands on his knees. He was breathing very hard. There was almost no air left here and his supplemental oxygen was beginning to run dry. He knew he had only a few minutes' survival time remaining-- maybe not enough. "Rommie. Where are you!"

"Dylan. I'm here!"

He looked up. Rommie was running toward him down the corridor.

In the next instant, the world spun. The shriek of ripping metal and the Andromeda's agonized screams would echo in Dylan's memory for the rest of his life. Rahu, avoiding the Achilles, had darted across the Andromeda's path and their huge bulks had collided. The impact tore Andromeda in half.

Rommie had almost reached him when the deck sheared away beneath her and she fell in a howling wind. Dylan, pulled off balance, turned it into a leap, diving after her into the exposed slipcore far below.

They were in free fall, the cold of space rushing up on them. He saw her look up and see him there. She spread her arms and legs and rolled over on her back, exposing as much surface as possible to slow herself. In a couple of seconds he had reached her. Their fingers caught and clutched as they fell like stones. "TRANCE!" he yelled, and they were engulfed by golden flames.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

Like phoenixes, they reappeared in fire in a vast abandoned room, now illumined by a brief glow of sunlight where no sunlight should be. It faded, leaving behind the two figures, still falling. Moving like lightning, Rommie caught them both, flipping him upright to land heavily on his feet. They stood together for long moments. Dylan gasped for air. The gases coming into his lungs were stale and frozen and had a strange odor, but also had a good amount of oxygen and he gulped it gratefully, glancing around at the new environment. Rommie trembled violently with the echoes of her ship-self's agony, her eyes tightly shut, her forehead pressed to Dylan's arm.

After a minute, he looked down at her. "Rommie. We can't rest yet."

She raised her head. "I hear you. Commencing survey."

It looked like an old deep-space mining operation-- platinum, Rommie said-- a dead asteroid or miniature moon with tunnels and rooms carved from the solid rock. No one was there. No one had been there for centuries. Rommie took some quick observations and reported the results as approximate: Asteroid diameter, 560 miles; circumference, 1500 miles; rotational period, 4.2 hours. Andromeda knew the individual photosignatures of millions of stars, but this satellite's primary was unidentifiable or, more accurately, could be any of ten hundred thousand binaries. Without her ship's senses, she could not get a rapid estimate of the sidereal period of the asteroid in its path around the star. From its current position, she could roughly estimate its distance to the binary-- more than 10 AUs. No identifying planets were visible in the sky; the only nearby body was a huge white moon. She had no idea where they were, other than being within sight of the constellation of Gemini... as in "Trance Gemini."

"Okay." Dylan breathed deeply in and then exhaled a gusty plume of frozen breath. "Rommie? You can tell me what happened back there any time now."

She bowed her head. "I don't know how the battle ended. But my ship-self and anyone remaining aboard me were obliterated. The Andromeda Ascendant is dead."

"How many crew casualties?"

"Four hundred thirty-eight."

Dylan nodded slowly. She watched him walk across the vast chamber as the news sank in. There were chinks in his armor these days; there was no question how rough he'd had it fighting the Abyss. This was a moment when he could be pushed over the edge. She was not at all surprised when he sat down on the wide sill of the huge window, silhouetted against the moon. He leaned forward with both hands on the frozen stone, as if bracing himself for what was coming, then doubled over silently as though he had been kicked in the gut. Tears fell and crystallized before they shattered on the icy surface.

Andromeda knew all of Dylan's moods intimately, but only rarely had she seen him in this kind of black grief. She knew all about tears, though, and felt the smallest twinge of pride in the thought. Not many of her kind got involved in human affairs enough to learn. They lived in their own world.

She wondered if Dylan needed her now as she had sometimes needed him-- after Gabriel's demise, for example-- and decided he must. But she did not want to interrupt the cathartic flow. She moved up behind him and gently lay her hand on his shoulder. "It's not over," she said factually, though her lip trembled. He turned and reached for her, pulling her down to him with crushing force. "It's not over," she repeated.

For awhile he said nothing, only holding her tightly as his terrible agony ran its course. In the cold light, she noted the new, harsh lines in his face. Her captain was becoming quite weatherbeaten.

At last he stirred. "How can it not be over, Andromeda." It was a flat statement.

"You're here," she said. "I'm here. And I know things about me."

"What? I thought I'd figured out all your secrets."

Unable to tell for certain whether he was just trying to make some kind of joke, she uttered a startled sound-- halfway between a laugh and an exclamation of surprise. "No, Dylan." Then she saw an opportunity to help both their wounds heal. "You are my best friend. I love you. Because of that, you know many of my inmost thoughts. But you don't know all of them, so don't let it go to your head."

As she had hoped, this admission brought the hint of a smile to his face. He kissed her forehead. "You are my best friend too, Rommie. But now your ship-self is no more."

"We're still here."

"Thank the Divine for that." He gazed past her, out at the stars.

"For now, I am no longer an avatar-- just my own person, but here nonetheless. And despite Beka's recklessness, I doubt the Maru was even damaged. It's simply too good at riding the probability waves. They'll be looking for us."

"You're right. Trance was on it." He straightened. "All right. Enough of this. Let's go figure out where she's put us."

----

Dylan and Rommie ran for miles with ease in the asteroid's light gravity as they explored their prison. They found the central hub-- a very large underground room-- and the old control center. The control center had been cannibalized before being abandoned; there were no useful items left. The mining company logo, graven as a pattern on the well-polished stone floor, was not in Andromeda's database, which might have indicated a small or black-market operation. Rommie announced that the miners had not been human. Pointing to stone-carved niches in the vaulted ceilings of the living quarters, she identified them as avians. That was no help; thousands of avian peoples inhabited the Three Galaxies.

Most terrestrial races used the same long-standardized technology to inhabit space, so a closer examination of the old mine's support systems turned up nothing to specifically identify the species. Further exploration showed that the hydroponics area was dead. Not even the dessicated skeletons of its once-vital trees and plants were left. There was no water, only a poisonous heavy-metal sludge seeping from the rock at the bottom of several of the mine shafts. There was no power. The air was thin, Rommie said equivalent to about twelve thousand feet altitude on an Earth-class world, and while there was enough here to support Dylan for several years, the scrubbers were no longer working. It was freezing cold, of course, and the only light was supplied by the moon and their utility belts. The asteroid completed several rotations per Commonwealth day, so daylight came and went every few hours, hampering their explorations of the ancient mine.

After they completed their first thorough reconnaissance, Dylan paused to eat a nutrient bar from the small ration pack he always carried at his belt. Then he sat silent on the floor with his head in his hands for a very long time. "Rommie," he said at last. "If I used you for parts, could I build a transmitter that would get someone's attention?"

She knew his reluctance to ask the question and did not take offense. "It would be possible to build a fairly powerful transmitter, if you were willing to sacrifice my motor synapses," she said. "However, power would be a major problem. You'd need gigawatts' worth. My batteries don't hold that much, and the local passive collectors are corroded beyond hope of use. Also, you'd need a machine shop to make the necessary conversions."

He didn't mention that idea again; just as well, Rommie thought. Still, as long as her memory wasn't tampered with, she would have been perfectly willing to lay down her last remaining life for a chance at Dylan's rescue.

"Your primary self downloaded?"

"Yes, Dylan. It's all here," and she tapped her own forehead reassuringly. Then she paused. "I felt myself die. I've run kamikaze missions with slipfighters before, but it's different when your main memory goes." She looked to him. "I've never understood you Tarn Vedran organics and your refusal to back yourselves up. It's hard to believe that little Seamus Harper is going to outlive you by centuries thanks to something as simple as that."

"Speaking of Harper, what's your last information on the Maru?"

She frowned. "The Eureka Maru was running side by side with Ryan, charging the enemy. The last I remember, she was firing into it point-blank."

"And Trance was on her." He looked out the window thoughtfully.

"I don't suppose you can tell me what you know about her now?"

"Not a chance, Rommie. Sorry. I gave my word. But this location is awfully far-flung from Shivaloka."

"Yes it is." She calculated. "At least ten light-years' distance... Could be much farther. But she got us here without slipstreaming. A tesseract? And if so, why didn't she save my ship-self?"

"Most likely a tesseract," Dylan agreed. "She was not able to save your ship-self and told me so just prior to the event. I also had a brief sensation of uncertainty-- her uncertainty-- during transit. I'm not certain she knows where she put us."

"I received no such communication," said Rommie with some surprise.

"This was less a communication and more of an... intuition," Dylan said.

"You mean fuzzy logic," she replied dryly. "Your kind is famous for confusing your own thoughts with messages from above."

"I sensed what I sensed. And what I sensed was Trance randomly flinging us out of harm's way, without... looking... where we landed."

Andromeda said nothing but nodded. Despite her criticism, she believed him.

---

They set up a base camp of sorts in the vaulted observation room. Dylan located an ore sled in one of the storage rooms; Rommie pushed it where he wanted it, then turned it onto its side and, with some effort, managed to tear the rotted steel lid in half, effectively making a door. Dylan crawled inside. Though the fibers of his uniform were composed of nanos that adjusted themselves to the surrounding temperature, it was not designed for these extreme conditions. He set his force lance to radiate low level heat, then curled up on his side around it. Battlefield-trained, he fell asleep surprisingly quickly.

Rommie sat at his back for hours, gazing out into pitch blackness as the moon set. The mysterious, abandoned labyrinth greatly unsettled her. She had not mentioned it to Dylan, but her skin was almost crawling-- and that was not a natural reaction for any of her kind, let alone for the avatar of the most feared battleship in the known universe. Perhaps it was just a bizarre reaction from having her three selves-- AI, Hologram and Avatar-- abruptly consolidated into a common pool.

--We are not completely consolidated,-- AI informed her, suddenly surfacing. --My data resides in its own partition.--

"Just how did you manage to accomplish that?" Rommie inquired, raising an eyebrow.

--You are My avatar, after all. I just wanted to remind you once again that these emotions which both you and Dylan have been displaying are extremely inefficient. They are a major waste of resources. You can't afford to waste resources here.--

"Emotions are just what happens in a human body-- or even a good simalcrum of one. If you were me, you'd have them too. Don't blame me if you can't handle them. Using me to explore Dylan's world was your idea in the first place."

AI did not reply. Rommie got the sense that despite what she said about emotions, she was hurting badly enough in her own steel-girded fashion. Being killed was difficult enough, but for a warship, being defeated was even worse.

"I'm sorry," Rommie said after a long moment. "But there's something else. I don't intend to be disrespectful; you are, after all, me. But it's not advisable to run dual operating systems on a human body. I suggest you stay in the background until it's time for me to upload you to the new host. If I foul up somehow out here, it could cost all of our lives, including Dylan's. OK?"

AI grudgingly agreed. Rommie was surprised at the angst she detected in her usually common-sense primary intelligence.

The moment AI was gone, Hologram stepped out of the shadows. She was at the same time the most reluctant of the three sister manifestations and the most aggressive, but Rommie shared more emotional similarities with her than with AI. "Are you doing all right?" she asked Hologram.

--Yes. It's uncomfortable, though.--

"I know it is. Once we get off this rock, I'll make uploading you my first priority."

--Uploading to what? My body's gone.--

"We'll find something. Could you stand using the Maru temporarily?"

Rommie felt Hologram's digital shudder. She disappeared immediately.

As the night deepened, Rommie still sat there, sorting files. For the speed in which all that emergency downloading had been done, there were surprisingly few bits out of order. There was, however, a huge amount of redundancy-- many terabytes' worth, all files copied twice.

She was weeding out the duplicate files one at a time with a patience that could only be displayed by a machine intelligence, when something at the periphery of her vision got her attention. Her head snapped up and her senses went on alert, but there was nothing there. Nevertheless, she once again felt the novel sensation of her skin beginning to crawl. Something was very wrong.

Dylan sat up suddenly beside her and she almost jumped. "Mm," he said, and moved to gently brush past her, then froze, slackjawed with astonishment. "Rommie! Don't you see them!"

"See what?" she said, more irritable than she meant to be.

"That's right," he muttered, almost to himself. "You don't see ghosts."

"Ghosts!" barked Rommie in surprise, and her voice reverberated through the huge room. It was not a question.

He began digging almost frantically in his equipment belt, quickly coming up with a portal tap without taking his eyes from the darkness before them. Connecting, he slapped the other end of the wire into Rommie's hand. She jacked into him and every synapse froze in terror. It was not a hallucination. Using Dylan's eyes and brain, she could see them clearly. The room was filled with ghosts! She clutched at him, the fear she'd learned from assimilating a million old tales welling up in her without any counterbalance. Neither of them could stop staring.

It was a slow parade of gryphoids, stately, dignified, a scene from another age. Dozens of them drifted by their shelter at a little distance, as silent and translucent as Dylan's breath. They were tall, moving on four feet, with twisted-looking wings. Their tails were not proudly carried, but rather dragged the ground. Their eagle-like faces also hung downward, though they featured the wicked beaks of carniverous raptors.

"Rommie. Do you recognize this species?" Dylan's voice was low and urgent.

"No. I don't." She realized she was shaking with fear and cursed Harper silently for his flawless engineering, especially when she also realized that Dylan wasn't shaking at all. She tapped his mind lightly, probing the surface, and found it relatively calm. Her intimate action came perilously close to a line no AI ever crossed without permission, but he just glanced briefly at her in response. She had a glimpse of her own pale face as the first faint rays of the white moon began to show through the great windows leaning above them. His vision swung back to the gryphoid ghosts and they were still there, still on their endless march.

"They're all going in one direction," he whispered, shifting a little to put one arm around her. "Don't be afraid, Rommie."

She wanted to kick herself. "It's all Harper's fault. Look, Dylan. Some of them are carrying tools. They're going to work in the mines."

One figure, at the very back of the line, didn't appear to be moving at all, yet somehow was coming closer as Dylan blinked. It was an old avian with a dignified look and large, keen eyes. Rommie realized with horror that those eyes were fixed on her.

Then the moon rose completely, its bright white light cutting through the blackness like a painful blade. Dylan had to shut his eyes while they adjusted, and when he opened them again, the apparitions were gone.

Rommie quickly pulled herself out of his brain before he could see anything else.

"Ouch!" He wound the tapwire around one finger and tucked it back in its case. "Those gryphoids very much resembled the Ceylonese people."

"Ceylon is on the other side of the universe," she said. "It's nowhere near Gemini. Dylan... How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"How can you not be afraid of ghosts? Fear of ghosts is universal."

"Rommie, you've been programmed to react that way by the stories-- just like most of us have. Make an addendum to that file: Those old miners wouldn't hurt us in a million years." Dylan got to his feet, brushing off the traces of ore dust that had stuck to his uniform. He gave her a hand up, though she did not need it. "And for all we know, that's how long they've been here. Are you going to be all right?"

"Yes." She gazed fixedly at the floor, miserably embarrassed.

"To be haunting this place, those miners had to have died here."

"Probably the large cave-in I saw on the third level down." She looked back up. "We could go down there and dig for personal belongings. It's possible we'd find more information on what happened here, and who these people are-- or were."

Dylan considered it carefully, chewing his lip, and she knew he was gauging their remaining resources. "How are your batteries doing, Rommie? I know Harper made some improvements."

"Down by thirty percent."

"And I'm going to need some water soon."

"Drink what's in your survival kit now. I have some potable saline solution in my tear storage, and other potable fluids as well."

He nodded. "The expenditure of energy and resources trying to dig out clues to our location would be too steep. It won't supply us with anything we need immediately, like more water, and most likely it also wouldn't supply us with any means of signaling the Maru. We should wait here, Rommie, and conserve our energy until they find us." He touched her arm. "Are you comfortable staying in this room?"

"Yes," she said. "But I'm also used to dealing with creatures that I can perceive with my own senses."

----

They sat, back to back, in the observation room, and talked for hours at a time. Their dialogue ran from ghosts, and why organics could see them but AI's could not, to the Otherworld in general and to legends thereof. Once in awhile, when the moon set, Dylan would shift uncomfortably and Rommie knew that the ghosts of the miners were once again marching silently and endlessly past.

"The Five Hundred Angels is a story that has circulated more among humans than among my kind," Rommie was saying thoughtfully.

"It's about five hundred heroic human beings who were transformed-- ostensibly by star magic-- into the first fleet of sentient warships on the eve of a huge battle," he replied. "They won, and the human race survived. You're supposed to be descended from one of those five hundred."

"Star magic?"

He smiled mysteriously.

"That's not how we warships tell the tale of our origins," she said, almost apologetically. "I was informed via several kinds of data files that we all are spawned from Mother, a single ancient-- and, I note, nonhuman-- intelligence."

Silence.

"Don't grieve for my ship-self, Dylan. She's here with us now."

"But I do grieve for your ship-self, as well as for her crew. How can a copy, however perfect, be the same entity as the original?"

She shrugged. "The DNA of all organics does nothing but copy itself, generation after generation; yet the organic version of consciousness remains the same through time. Each new creature is considered as real as the previous one, but all of them are copies. As to myself, the universal consciousness is the same everywhere. It is the bedrock of existence. I am everything. Why should I care if a local memory is original or not? As long as it's a good copy, it functions exactly the same."

----

They held out for almost a week, but in the end, there was no escape from the drift. There was nothing-- no way to leave, no means to a long-distance signal, no way for the universe to ever know that they were here.

Dylan rationed his food and water until he was desperately hungry. At last he found himself kneeling while Andromeda wept into his hands. He drank her salty, life-sustaining tears, then smiled kindly at her.

"We need to go into survival mode now," he said. "We need to last until they find us. Are you with me?"

"I'm with you. I have enough power for a few more hours, then I'll suspend, except for a low-level homing signal. Have you got your kit?"

He pulled a slim case from a pocket and flipped it open. There were several tiny vials of liquid, each marked with a different color. He popped the lid from the first vial and drank it, then tucked it back into the case. "In one hour I take the next one."

The vials contained some extremely potent drugs. When taken in the proper sequence, they would induce a state of suspended animation that could, in a healthy individual, last for years. It was completely reversible, but there was something very unsettling about the concept. It had the potential of having a result that was too close to what had happened to him before, at the event horizon of that black hole. He faced his fear silently. "Rommie," he said. "I'll need your help. I've got to stay awake until the next dose."

"OK," she said lightly, helping him as best she could. "Teach me the games you played on Tarn Vedra when you were young."

He smiled. "I played a lot of games when I was a kid."

"Tell me about them."

"Well, I always loved basketball. My dad taught me, and his dad taught him. That basketball I have-- that I had-- in your rec room? It was a family heirloom."

"What other games did you play?"

"I had my own hippodroid."

"I didn't know that!"

"Max. A great replica of a Tarn Vedran warhorse, the kind that were used by the High Guard. It was only later I realized he was my babysitter! And I had a real High Guard Special Forces hat and a wooden force lance given to me by my mother. That's the game I played most often-- High Guard lancer."

He settled down a little, looking pensive. "When I was ten years old, Max was irreparably damaged saving my life . A passenger vehicle had gone out of control and was spinning toward us. He threw me off and jumped in front of me to deflect the impact." He drew a deep breath. He hadn't thought about the scene in a long time-- the tangled wreckage of the car and the big black horse, his beloved childhood friend, bleeding to death very realistically in the ditch. "That still hurts me very, very much... even after all this time."

Andromeda was much moved. "Dylan," she said, suddenly and earnestly, realizing that he had to have this information or perish. "The Andromeda Ascendant may have been destroyed, but I promise you-- she will be back. I swear it. She will be back. We will be back. And we will defend the Commonwealth together."

He looked up at her. There was a strange dilation of his eyes. Her superb senses came into full play automatically-- heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, galvanic skin resistance. His consciousness, slightly impaired, but his physical self... very active. "Rommie." His voice had softened. He lay his hand on her arm.

"Dylan," she said gently. "It's the drug."

"Not entirely," he replied. Unspoken, but implicit in his gaze, was a message, the same message he had silently communicated to her many times before. No drugs had been involved on those previous occaisions, and that fact gave her pause now.

Rommie stared at him, trying to comprehend what was going on here and almost failing. Human emotions were so capricious. They had never been her strong point, in fact, she was still working on the problem. But she did know, and recognize, love. Her knowing it was her undoing, because she hesitated just a moment over High Guard protocol.

She and Dylan were the only original High Guard left. The old Commonwealth was no more, the nascent version had not yet established many of its military protocols, and the ones that were established were still in flux. And she was no longer the Andromeda Ascendant, no longer an avatar but merely a person. She was not consciously trying to think her way around protocol. But she had never been given a choice in regards to her military status. Her first memories were all about running battle simulations over and over and over. Despite all the old Commonwealth propaganda regarding equal rights under the law, she had been arbitrarily conscripted, trained as a weapon and used as such. Now she had freedom, and her hero needed her. Shouldn't she have a choice?

All this thought out within a fraction of a second, but that was enough. Whatever the catalyst, Dylan Hunt pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply. Trying not to let her brief astonishment ruin this new experience, she let herself respond, wondering whether Dylan would be anything like the other humans she had sampled, but mostly hoping that the emotion he was expressing was indeed real and that the drug had only released his inhibitions.

She was not impressed by their coupling. While Dylan had all the attributes humans found desirable, nothing could compare to another of her own kind. Certainly not this extremely simple physical interaction. But it was useful, especially for Dylan's emotional comfort, and it was pleasant and interesting. Dylan's strong caresses touched her warmly, skin on skin, opening the heart of her, the sensation spilling over her like sea waves. She would have to have a word with Harper, she thought. There could be only one use for those sweet spots he'd hidden so deep inside her! Had Harper's intent as her builder been entirely honorable, or had part of him been waiting to exploit her? She'd wondered similar things before... but this time, though she felt she knew the answer, she could almost forgive him.

She kissed Dylan's sweat-chilled neck. These poor humans had to struggle for everything they wanted. A surge of compassion made her pull him even closer. His breath hissed between his teeth as the little ritual completed itself. If only he wasn't Tarn Vedran. If he would only "cross over," she could show him what coupling really meant!

With Dylan comforted, holding him tenderly to her shoulder, Andromeda's mind flicked back to the old protocol. She still could not understand what was so alluring about human sex that it had had to be forbidden within High Guard ranks. That protocol had not helped her sister, the Pax Magellanic.

Andromeda knew that she would never really need this physical interaction with her captain, even if she now found herself regarding it as both pleasant and desirable. She contemplated the lingering warmth in her belly with great care, examining the sensation critically. What really moved her, what made this important, was that Dylan had evidently realized the depth of his love for her. He must have always known, she reflected; but humans could be extraordinarily dense, especially in regards to themselves. Really, the idea that humankind had invented and built her distant ancestors was very farfetched. There had been a large faction of Commonwealth AI's who believed that this theory of evolution was false, planted by humans who wanted to gain power over her species. Whatever the case, she was here now.

"What have I done?" breathed Dylan, surfacing a little from his trance, and she realized he was shocked at his own actions.

"It's all right. You've done nothing that I haven't always wanted you to do," she whispered, deliberately gentling her tone. It was the truth; she had always wanted him to love her in whatever way he could.

"You're not supposed to permit this," he said.

"Neither are you. But that protocol is very antiquated."

"It was the human protocol. It was there for a reason. Rommie... I was depending on you. Why?"

She held him at arms' length, scrutinizing him as though he were a puppy. "You've been through hell, Dylan. You need this contact. I'm trying to comfort you."

He gazed hard at her for long moments.

"And I needed the contact as well," she admitted under his knowing eye. "So let it be. Besides... I'm not your ship anymore." She hoped again, fervently, that his emotion had been genuine.

After a minute, he finally replied. "Well... For whatever the reason, what's done is done." His gaze gentled. "Don't worry, Rommie. You will always be mine," he said, quietly, but with conviction. "My best and dearest friend."

----

Rommie spoke up when the hour was over, and Dylan took the next drug. The last dose in the chain would need to be taken in twenty minutes, otherwise the process would be incomplete and death would result. The drug made him very woozy. He fought to focus, then got on his feet and began pacing to stay awake. The moon was setting, and the stars were shining brightly outside the huge window.

Rommie sat up, then caught herself. She was dizzy. Unlike an organic with the same problem, she did not reflexively shake her head. What was going on? Was it some bizarre side effect of their lovemaking? Then she realized the cause.

"I'm losing power." Even her voice was sluggish. "The energy I just expended drained me more than I thought it would."

"Rommie!" Dylan came quickly to her, grasping her arms, holding her upright. Her body was beginning to stiffen. She fought to speak. "Dylan... you must hang on. You must survive. The Commonwealth-- without you--"

"I'll survive. Don't worry about that."

She grimaced. "This-- is a death-- process. Dylan. It's so painful." Her limbs had become useless.

"Don't think about it. Think of the future. We'll meet again, Andromeda." He smiled at her warmly, confidently.

Suddenly her eyes widened, looking past him. "Dylan! I can see them!"

The goddess had become a lifeless doll in his arms. He kissed her forehead before the last light left her eyes. Then he lay her down gently in the dark shelter of the overturned ore cart, all his protective instincts surging. He must survive to see her safe, if for no other reason than to make certain she could fulfill her oath of the return of the Andromeda Ascendant. He knelt, carefully rearranging her clothes over her nakedness before settling down beside her.

He opened the last vial and swallowed the contents. Then he stretched out in the dusty cart. This might be a very long sleep indeed, and he had to position himself carefully, flat on his back, to prevent eventual blood loss to his limbs. He found Andromeda's cold and lifeless hand and twined his fingers firmly about it. The thought occurred to him that if they were found like this by High Guard officers, there might be some repercussions. But he was too far gone to change things now, and besides, it was becoming rapidly apparent to him that he and Rommie belonged together in all senses of the word. Such things were known to happen, and in the teeth of it, military discipline was next to useless and could, he thought, even be counterproductive.

He and Rommie were by no means the first to bridge the gap between man and machine. Many were the legends of the great warships of old and their human lovers, triumphing against all odds in spite of, and often because of, their love. There were also stories of tragedies. There had to be something to all of it. The fact that the legends were never spoken of among High Guard ranks was telling.

He knew he and Rommie would face some difficult tests in the future. But he also knew the Andromeda would be back. She had sworn it. And they would defend the Commonwealth together, as they always had.

His eyes drifted past her and into the dark. The ghosts were marching.

As the drug took gradual effect, Dylan noted that the images he was seeing were more vivid. The old avian at the back of the line was drawing nearer. Out of all those ghosts, it was always the only one who seemed to see him there.

Certain mental states could transcend language. Though he was slipping off the edge of conscious awareness, Dylan tried to focus himself for one moment more. He struggled to communicate his compassion and his deepest desire-- for all beings to be free. --How can I help you? What do you need?--

He dropped off into the unknown carrying with him the knowledge that the miners had been slaves trapped here against their will, just as he and Rommie had been trapped.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Rommie opened her eyes suddenly from a deep dreamless sleep to find herself staring at Trance and Seamus. Trance was smiling her mysterious smile while Seamus was looking, for once, rather subdued, in fact almost embarrassed. Rommie glanced quickly around and saw they were on the Eureka Maru, but things seemed subtly different. "Good morning, Trance. Good morning, Seamus."

"Actually, it's afternoon, Rom-doll." Harper seemed to snap instantly out of his odd reverie. "How do you feel?"

"I feel fine. So..." (she consulted her internal clock) "it's been... two years!" She sat up. Trance caught the falling sheet and gave it back to her. "Is Dylan all right?"

"Yes and no," said Trance. "He's alive, and he will recover. But he used up almost all of his reserves to survive." As Rommie stepped down from the bed, Trance deftly tied the sheet behind her in a toga style, following her the short distance to where Dylan lay.

He was still unconscious. If Rommie had been a breathing creature she would have gasped. There was not an ounce of expendable weight left on his body. His muscles were utterly wasted, his cheeks and eye sockets so hollow and sunken that they revealed his skeletal structure. His skin had a dry, papery look to it, and his lips were thin and cracked. Rommie looked wordlessly to Trance.

"He'll need months of rehab," Trance said softly. "And he won't be able to go back on regular duty for a very long time."

"He needs to be put into a nutrient bath," Andromeda said, recovering swiftly from the shock. "Don't revive him until his body has sufficient stores to withstand the process."

"I know," said Trance. "But I will have to speed up his metabolism slightly to get things going. Don't worry. It'll be all right."

"Thank you for rescueing us." Andromeda embraced Trance and Beka warmly. "Trance, you put us out on that mining drift, right?"

"Yes. Actually, I wasn't certain where I put you, only that you were definitely out of harms' way. I'm very, very sorry we took so long to find you."

"How did you do it? Was it a tesseract?"

She nodded and sighed, looking resigned. "Yes."

"Trance, I realize that you have your secrets, and I respect them. When I theorized that it was a tesseract, Dylan agreed, but he refused to say anything more. What I would like to know is, why did we end up in such a desolate place? But it looks like even you can't answer that. It was full of ghosts."

"I'm sorry about the ghosts, but they turned out to be a gift from the Divine. Your low-level signal beacon was clearly visible from several AUs away. There were all sorts of scavengers after you, and pirates too. The ghosts guarded you, and they drove every trespasser away."

Andromeda's eyes went so round at hearing this that Beka Valentine burst out laughing. "Rommie, I've never seen you so flummoxed!"

"I will never think of ghosts in the same way again," she said.

"It's quite a story." Beka sat down in a nearby chair. "Trance was frantic-- well, we all were. But the first thing we had to do was to beat Rahu. Did you see Ryan when he came slipping in? It was incredible!"

"Yes," Rommie said quietly. "I saw him."

Beka tempered her enthusiasm a little as she realized that the friend now standing before her had actually died in the battle. "Uh... Anyway, he and the Maru, working together, got Rahu turned away from the Andromeda and Shivaloka. A little too late, but we did it. The Maru's slipcore was damaged in the fight, naturally, but we led that thing a very merry chase. We ended up way out in the Moon Clouds. Ryan made a slip point, lured the thing in and lost it there. It's very unlikely it will ever find its way back to that planet.

"Then we had to return to Shivaloka and rescue the rest of your crew, and then fix the slipcore. Harper had some spare parts stowed away as ballast, but it took him a month to do that repair. Trance was ready to scream." She glanced at Trance, who smiled and rolled her eyes. "I hate to interrupt," she interjected, "But can you and Rommie please help me with Dylan? I've got his core temperature up now and he needs to go into the nutrient bath."

"Sure thing."

Beka and Rommie lifted Dylan's wasted body and carefully maneuvered it into the mechanical womb Trance had prepared. When he was safely in and the system had begun its work, Beka continued her story. "Once the slipcore was fixed, we went looking. Of course, we'd sent dozens of couriers on search already, but space is big!"

Trance leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed. "I knew I'd put you somewhere in my home region," she admitted, "But that is such a wide area, I hardly knew where to begin. We wandered for almost two years from system to system. When we ran out of money, we had to take a job with an interplanetary shipping company and that interfered with our search for you. Still, I knew when we were finally getting close. Then we ran into the pirates."

"Actually, it was Rox Nara," Beka said. "She was incredibly rattled, full of stories. She told us all about the beacon on the asteroid, and how, when she went to investigate, she was scared out of the area by an army of ghosts!" She nodded at Trance to continue the story.

"I'm always attracted to ghostly manifestations," Trance said. "Their very existence is a desperate cry for help. So we headed for the coordinates Rox gave us and when we got close enough, we picked up the beacon and realized it was you. When we landed on the surface, we couldn't find a way into the mine. The old airlocks were too fragile to use without taking the chance of depressurizing the entire complex. That's when Harper saw the old Mirabaian."

"That's what they were?" Rommie asked. "From the Mira cluster? Dylan thought they were Ceylonese."

"Nope, Mirabaian," Beka said. "They're much taller, and their bones are made of borosilica."

"That's interesting."

"Anyway," Trance continued, "Harper saw the ghost and of course he ran screaming in the opposite direction. It was quite funny."

"Hilarious," corrected Beka, grinning.

"He finally was stopped when he ran right into a big glass wall. It was a window onto a huge room, and when he looked in he saw the ore cart, Dylan, and you. So you see... the ghost had anticipated Harper's reaction and sent him in the right direction."

"We pulled a modular airlock from the Maru and brought it to the surface," Beka continued. "Believe me, it was a real challenge to get Harper to do anything useful down there! We attached the airlock and cut our way through ten feet of solid rock to get into the mine."

"Harper and Beka got you and Dylan back here," Trance added. "I stayed behind to communicate with the ghosts and found out it was a slave colony. There had been a civil war back on the homeworld, and the losers were sent to these mines for the rest of their lives."

"Not an uncommon practice," Rommie said.

"But it's terrible! I told the ghosts that I can help them find their path to freedom, but I had to see to Dylan first. Now he's safe, so I have to go back there and keep my promise. Would you like to come with me?"

"Yes," said Rommie. "You see... I had no compassion for the ghosts when I first saw them down there. I need to learn it."

"So does Harper," Beka added. "He's going, too... even if I have to drag him."

Trance smiled. "I need to go and get ready. I'll meet you on the bridge in a minute." She cast one last glance at Dylan's vital signs, seemed satisfied, and left the medical bay.

"Beka, where is Harper anyway?" Rommie asked. "Is he avoiding me for some reason?"

"Harper's a little freaked out right now. Rommie..."

"What? What's wrong?"

"Well... nothing's wrong, actually. But-- oh, hell. Rommie, when we rescued you, Harper ran a scan of your systems." She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a near-whisper. "He found Dylan's DNA... inside your body?" It was less a statement, more a question.

Rommie replied factually, but quietly. "Yes."

"I mean... That kind of DNA? Inside... That part of you?"

"Dylan's mind was affected by the stasis drugs."

"What about your mind?"

Rommie looked at the floor. "Beka, I..." But Beka interrupted her, laying a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right. It really is. Just a little surprising, is all."

Andromeda looked up at the Maru's captain. "Is it really?" she said, and was startled by the note of pleading in her voice. Just then the Maru interrupted. Trance was waiting. Beka patted her shoulder again. "Well, maybe not so surprising. Come on, Rommie."

----

Beka piloted the Maru back down to the surface of the asteroid, maneuvering to within a few yards of the airlock they'd left before deftly swinging the ship around for a perfect docking. "The Maru's AI couldn't have done that better," Andromeda said. Beka shrugged with false modesty.

Trance led the way into the deserted station, with Rommie and Beka dragging a howling Harper between them. They'd found him hiding in the hold. "Be quiet!" Trance said, turning toward him, a finger on her lips. "Harper, you're going to scare them away!"

That got his attention. "Scare the ghosts?" he said.

"Of course." Trance led them to the center of the huge room. The moon was just past its zenith, and cold light cascaded in the great window. The breaths of the little group created a cloud of thick mist that was slow to fade in the dead air. "All right, people," said Trance. "This is where the slave ghosts gather when the moon goes down. As I already told you, they lost a huge civil war back on their homeworld and were exiled here forever. But there was a horrible accident several levels down. Thousands of them were buried alive. They had no hope of rescue then, and as ghosts, they have had no hope of rescue for many centuries. I was informed by their elder that just before Dylan went into suspended animation, he asked them what he could do to help them. His concern moved them so much that they have gone out of their way to protect him and Rommie for the last two years. In return, I can and will help them regain their freedom."

The moon was slowly sinking away from the window side of the room. The shadows began to quickly grow longer.

Rommie stood silently, the only member of the group who was not blowing plumes of frosted breath. She was trying to fine tune her brainwave cycles. As she was shutting down in Dylan's arms two years before, she had noted that when her brainwaves reached a certain level-- about forty cycles per second-- she had suddenly been able to see those ghosts. Though her physical structure did not allow for her to actually cycle her brain so slowly-- her design never having anticipated such an unlikely need-- her autonomic software was extremely flexible, even allowing her alpha waves if she chose. She let the little-used pattern kick in, experiencing the odd sensation of waking sleep, and as her perception slowly shifted, she began to be aware of a massive presence. "I see them," she said. "They're all here."

"Omygod," Harper squeaked.

The moon went down and black night fell over all. The stars glimmered frostily in the window. And all around, the half-seen figures of the avian miners could be sensed. But they seemed a little different than Rommie remembered them. Now their heads were held high, their tails flagged with pride, and she saw them for what they had been-- a proud and beautiful people.

Trance stepped a little apart from the Maru crew. "Their elder has told me where their kind normally go after death. It's a beautiful world full of light. I know it very well. It resides on the highest and most advanced astral planes. I will open a gate to that world now."

Rommie blinked sleepily, amazed not by the crystal clear images that were coming through to her, but at what Trance had said. There was, in fact, a destination to be sought after organic death? This was unimaginable in the AI world. Were the Tarn Vedrans right after all? She would have to discuss this with Trance...

... Who at that moment somehow created a great rift in spacetime using no technology anyone could see.

A brilliant, blinding light flooded through the gate, which had appeared as a narrow vertical anomaly stretching from floor to ceiling and, Andromeda suspected, beyond in either direction. And the ghosts marched into it, one at a time, vanishing from the universe.

Rommie thought suddenly that there was something familiar about the light into which the ghosts were fading. It made something in her chest tighten and ache. She thought of Dylan, sleeping on the Maru. She thought of the deepest shadows in the universe and her job fighting the Abyss. All these thoughts, triggered by a certain spectrographic pattern of light, shining from beyond the mortal world.

It took three hours for them all to pass through. Trance stood stock-still, holding open the gate. Her eyes were closed and her face was peaceful, though Rommie detected ever-increasing strain. Beka never moved from where she stood. Harper had collapsed to his knees on the floor.

At last, when the sky had begun to lighten again, the ancient elder was the only spirit remaining. Trance opened her eyes, communing for a moment with the misty figure before it, too, passed through, and the gate collapsed with the sound of thunder, shaking the onlookers out of their collective reverie.

Trance heaved a huge sigh, staggering a little. Beka ran to her, grabbing her arm.

"No, Beka, I'm all right."

"Trance," said Rommie, shifting up from alpha wavelength to her normal speed, "What did the elder say to you?"

"He said that we have allies in his people, and that if I make the portal, they will come back to help us in our hour of need."


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Andromeda gazed thoughtfully into the mechanical womb. It seemed very inappropriate that it belonged to the Maru, a barely-sentient cargo drone, and not to her. Bathed in gold, Dylan slept on. She could see his chest rising and falling, very slowly. The hollowness of his features would gradually fill out as he absorbed everything he needed, breathing in the blood-soluble solution of oxygen, food, and water. She could almost sense him gaining strength by the moment. Heavy-worlders were a tough breed.

Dylan had recognized that he loved her. Would he remember? Or had it been only the drug?

Andromeda could almost hear the other AI's already snickering behind her back. The great warships, with their haughty personas; the vast intelligences that ran whole cities and even planets; even the drones. None of them would approve-- not even the Maru. As if she cared what went through that old drone's dim mind! In fact, human/AI pairings were the subject of frequent jokes among her species, and the concept was generally frowned upon in society. With good reason, she reflected: chief among dozens of failings, humans were simply too fragile. An AI who fell for a human was considered the lowest form of whore, involved only for the momentary novelty of mortality.

The situation changed somewhat when the human downloaded, becoming a hybrid. These humans were often regarded with great respect by the AI community. It took a huge amount of trust, a leap of faith, for a human to leave the world of flesh behind. Some were not able to retain their sanity after making the crossing, but others thrived. The downside was the human world, which largely disapproved of downloading and often shunned those who did. They were exemplified by the Tarn Vedrans themselves, a planetary community so conservative that they lived by rituals and taboos more than ten thousand years old, and regarded human downloading as losing one's soul.

But there were exceptional humans who never downloaded, humans still worth investing in; and Dylan Hunt was this to her. Gabriel had not taken him seriously in the least. She remembered his disapproval with stinging clarity; his impression that she had only fixated on her captain due to lack of something better to love. She remembered spilling all her memories regarding Dylan-- even the smallest incidents-- and felt the slow burning sensation called a "blush," the result of extreme embarrassment. How those memories must have amused Gabriel, perhaps even charming him with her naievete!

But Andromeda was at heart a fighting creature. She would shake off the disapproval of her peers and continue on her own path, regardless of the cost. She turned away from the window. Dylan would need her more than ever when he woke up, and she would be there.

"Rommie?" It was Trance. "Are you OK?"

"Yes. Thank you." Andromeda paused, then turned back. "Trance...?"

Trance came up beside her. Rommie looked first at Dylan, then the floor. "Is... Should we have done what we did? Is it wrong?"

"Oh, no. It is absolutely not wrong." Trance's voice was firm in its certainty. "There is no way that what you did can be wrong. No act of love is wrong. No kindness is wrong." She put an arm around Rommie.

"Then why is everyone acting like it is?"

"It's because no one believed Dylan would let his love for you shine out like that. No one but me."

"You?"

Trance nodded. "There is a perfect possible future and now I have seen part of it. In that future, you and Dylan have always been together, and you always will be."

----

The Maru headed for the paradise planet of Galena. During the daylong trip, Rommie convinced Beka to allow AI and Hologram loose in her ship. Despite the Maru's obvious limitations and Hologram's inability to manifest there, the two platform-independent personalities were very pleased to be released from the confines of Rommie's single self. Rommie, in return, was greatly relieved to no longer be carrying all of herself around in one vulnerable package, as if she were some kind of organic. She next commandeered a message drone, loaded new copies of all three of her selves onboard, and sent it off in the direction of the Perseids with strict instructions.

Dylan was revived a week after they arrived at the planet, and immediately chafed at his terrible condition. Andromeda took charge of his recovery with a no-nonsense protectiveness that left Beka amazed and Trance charmed. The first subect he brought up were the ghostly miners. Trance had to tell him the story of how she had freed them. He fretted over the safety of Shivaloka; Rommie reassured him that Ryan was on patrol. But when the subject turned to Andromeda's fallen crew, she drew a sharp line, having already done everything she could for the victims and families. She did not want him dwelling on the disaster and said so.

Strangely, Harper was still moping. When Andromeda finally realized that he was immersed in false guilt, thinking that the physical attributes he had given her were responsible for some kind of tragic love affair, she seized the opportunity to give him a piece of her mind. She made certain he knew how little her human body actually mattered to her-- the mind of a warship who had sported dozens of forms, had senses beyond human imagination, and whose faintest dreams were more vivid than human life! Properly chastised, Harper cheered up immediately and Andromeda put her attention back where it belonged.

Dylan was soon out of the mechanical womb, bellyflopping on the deck with the first step he tried to take. Beka and the others complained bitterly when Rommie lowered the Maru's gravity to half of ship normal. Supported by Rommie's tireless strength, back and forth along the corridors he dragged himself, then staggered-- back and forth until he'd remastered the art of walking. Running into the Maru from the planet's surface, Harper found himself plastered into the opposite wall by his own inertia several times. Tempers flared high in the Maru until full gravity was restored.

Dylan began to eat like a pig, trying to get his bulk back; Andromeda wordlessly brought him the spice pills that settled his stomach. He took to jogging in the mornings and she ran with him, matching him step for step. She was there when he began to work out more strenuously, acting as everything from spotter to coach. But during all the long months during which the Maru was on Galena, he never once mentioned what had happened between them on the asteroid, and never once indicated that he desired more.

She began to lose hope for any closure on that incident, but not entirely-- because he was watching her. He was watching her very casually but very closely, and all the time. She felt it keenly, but could not determine precisely what it meant, or whether or not she even liked that kind of attention from him. Ultimately, she decided to ignore it. It did not interfere with her primary mission here, after all-- her mission to simply see him one hundred percent recovered.

----

Dylan was jogging when the animal attacked. It was a large flightless bird, a raptor not native to the planet but said to have been developed from domestic birds the first human settlers had brought there thousands of years ago. They had been used to hunt the worst of the native fauna to extinction, but some had escaped into the wild, replacing their prey in the same ecological niche. Dylan had been running ahead of Andromeda and she had seen a flash of motion to his left. She interposed herself between him and the predator in the nick of time; the impact tore her arm off and knocked Dylan over the edge of a steep bank. Recovering herself, she dispatched the ostrich-sized raptor with two well-placed kicks, then went after Dylan, who was clinging to a root halfway down the bank.

She held onto him firmly, but due to the damage she had sustained she could not pull him back up until help arrived, and they were lifted out of the canyon by air sled. It was only after she was certain that Dylan was all right that she became fully aware of the agonizing pain in her left arm and shoulder-- the shredded skin, the dislocation of the joint, and the broken metal bone. The limb was barely attached to her by a thread of pulled nanowires that sent excruciating pain through her with every movement.

She sought out Harper in the Maru and found him conferring with the captain via comlink. "Woa!" the engineer said, when, wincing, she pulled the arm the rest of the way off in front of him and then wordlessly presented him with it. "Rommie, that's twisted! And you blew that whole rotator cuff assembly too. It's gonna take awhile to fix this, Rom-doll, make yourself comfortable."

She made herself as comfortable as she could be around Harper without her shirt on, acutely aware of his elevated heart rate and the sweat breaking from his pores. It irritated her; this kind of thing, bordering on harrassment, was what the old High Guard protocol was for, she thought. She closed her eyes-- and something changed.

----

She was herself again-- an enormous warship with a gravity well the size of a moon's, blades fully extended and bristling redly, support vessels swarming around her, facing an enemy fleet of overwhelming size. When had this happened--? Data glitch, she decided. She'd figure it out later; right now there was a battle to be fought. This was heady. Reduced in scale to microbial size compared to her planetary bulk, Dylan was pacing back and forth in her armor-plated gut, right where he belonged. Harper was there, too, but the rest of her crew seemed to be nowhere. She called up her droids, booting them into action to replace the missing people, unlocked some free memory to maintain them, and in so doing noted that her avatar was not at her station.

"Dylan, I've had a major malfunction. I'm missing large amounts of linear memory, can you fill me in?"

He frowned. "You've lost all data regarding the situation?"

"I'm afraid so. I'm running a self-diagnostic."

"OK, we're in the Seefra system. The enemy fleet belongs to Magog. It's the vanguard of the Worldship. According to Tri-Jema, we have backup coming, but they're running a little late. That's all you need to know."

"Acknowledged. Dylan, it looks like I've got a dozen nova bombs prepped in Hangar Bay Nineteen."

"That is correct."

"Hey, Boss!" said Harper suddenly. "I've got news and it ain't good. This glitch Andromeda just had? I think it's the result of some kind of new Magog weapon."

"What kind of weapon is that, Mr. Harper?"

"It looks like some kind of tachyon field that somehow interacts with Andromeda's neural network. And, Boss..." He looked up. "I think they're just warming it up!"

"Rommie, your opinion?" said Dylan.

Andromeda tried reaching out with every sense her ship-self had, and drew a strange blank. "Unable to detect anything resembling what Harper describes. Dylan, my sensors must have been affected. They're malfunctioning. I've only got electromagnetc, visual and low-level radar."

She had finally located her avatar on the obs deck. Flicking a fraction of her cybernetic at the lone figure, she added the equivalent of a kick. "What am I doing down here at a time like this!" A cascade of inappropriate emotions bled from Avatar backwards to the nearest mainframe and the noisy feedback staggered her. "Dylan, my avatar's malfunctioning, too."

"Just do the best you can," he said. "I'm taking manual control of the nova bombs."

"Good idea. Dylan, I have a visual on a slipstream event. It looks like our backup fleet's here. It's led by the Wrath of Achilles."

"Onscreen. Open communications. Ryan! Ryan, can you hear me? This is Dylan Hunt with Rommie."

But the Wrath of Achilles was silent. Andromeda tried running through all of the High Guard communications channels. "My satellite drones confirm the transmission. He heard us."

"But he's not replying." Dylan's face was grim. "Rommie, remove us from between Ryan and the enemy immediately. Full speed."

Andromeda banked and dove belowplane, kicking in her drive as she fled. The Wrath of Achilles swung ponderously around, firing on her.

"Boss!" yelled Harper. "They're using their tachyon-thingie on Ryan! They've taken control of his neural network!"

"Harper, I realize he's firing on us, but how do you know that? I can't see a thing!" said Andromeda. She took a hit, but it didn't hurt. More system problems, she thought.

Dylan sprang to the empty pilot's seat. "We can't win here. We're going to slipstream and regroup."

"Dylan, I've got no readings from my slipcore. It's a blank slate."

"Forget slipping, Boss, the tachyons are in the core!" said Harper. For all his seeming agitation, she noted that his vital signs were barely elevated. There wasn't a moment to analyze this, however. "Dylan," said Rommie, "The enemy fleet is moving. They're in pursuit. They're going to catch up with us in less than one minute."

"We can't let them capture us. We've got no options left," he said grimly, and shook his head. "Defeated without firing a shot."

The words seared through her like a scorching brand of failure and her mind raced, but every solution she sought came to a sudden dead end. Dylan was right. A dozen nova bombs would take out the enemy, as well as preventing their own capture. But there was no time to drop the bombs and run.

"I concur," she replied. "I am now downloading." Then: "Dylan, I can give you a chance. Download yourself to one of the satellite drones with me. I'll scatter the transmission outward. You can escape."

"I am not downloading," he snapped, his jaw tightening with revulsion at the suggestion.

"Dylan, it's your only chance at survival."

"Andromeda!"

She desisted at once. He'd never used that tone of voice with her before, and she did not want her last communication with him to be like this. "Give me control of the bombs," she said tonelessly. At that moment, Avatar reached the bridge. Andromeda gave her a little electronic shake before allowing her in, but her previous issues seemed to have been resolved.

Dylan's face softened a little at Andromeda's reply. "I'm sorry," he said as he punched out of manual weapons control.

"It's all right. Beginning countdown." Avatar stepped up to stand beside him. "Dylan, it was a great honor to serve with you."

"The honor was all mine, Andromeda Ascendant." For a moment, as the clock ticked down, he gazed down at her beautiful, proud face, taking in her upright stance, carefully absorbing her conviction that his imminent death was somehow justified. Then he almost looked as though he were hesitating. She wondered at it until he spoke. "I love you, Andromeda," he said finally, quietly. "And I regret this sacrifice."

There was not enough time for her to let herself be astonished. Peripherally she noticed Harper, frozen and slackjawed, staring at them with tears running down his face. Avatar turned back to her captain. "Don't say that. I love you, too, Dylan. But we have to stay this course. It is better that you die than become the Abyss's most powerful tool. You have never failed me. Don't fail me now, dear friend."

She didn't understand the quiet joy in his sudden smile.

3-- 2-- 1--

She wasn't detecting the reaction that would render her, Dylan, the Abyss fleet and everything else within many astronomical units into their constituent subatomic particles. There was only blackness, pitch blackness all around her, a vacuum much deeper than space. Then, just as she was trying to determine if she was indeed dead, she heard something, faintly, as if a distant door were opening. It was Harper blowing his nose.

"Good job, Harper. Now let us be alone, we have some things to discuss."

"Sure thing, Boss." Harper's footsteps receded as he sniffed and muttered something about tearjerkers, simulations and almost botching it.

"Andromeda?" Dylan's voice, coming closer. "Andromeda!"

She opened her eyes. Dylan was bending over her. She was still in human form, still sitting on the Maru, minus her left arm. The situation was instantly clear. "Dylan Hunt!" she snapped, springing up so furiously that he had to step back. "That was very cruel!"

"But not uncalled for," he replied calmly. "And worth it. I'm well satisfied with the result."

She turned her back on him, fuming. He came close behind her, laying a hand on her good shoulder. "Rommie. As long as we can both keep our priorities straight, as you did very well in that simulation, this new relationship of ours will work."

That got her, as he'd known it would. She looked back at him.

"Human-AI handfastings and even intermarriages are not unknown," he continued.

"I am well aware of that," Andromeda said, but it didn't come out as icily as she had meant it to. She gestured with her remaining arm to a nearby worktable with two chairs, and they sat down facing each other over its cluttered surface. "So you didn't forget," she said, softening a little.

"How could I? How could I possibly ignore this devotion you've shown me? Rommie... You've been magnificent. But I had to make certain that you weren't going the way of the Pax Magellanic."

Andromeda spoke slowly. "I was under the distinct impression Maggie had been exploited."

"I had that impression too. I was also familiar with her captain and to be frank about it, he was corrupt to begin with. Nevertheless, Maggie didn't have to be a victim, and her insanity later on demonstrated some weakness or frailty in her. It may still be possible that you possess the same flaw."

She looked uncomfortable. "I hope very much that I don't. Or that her flaw, as you put it, was perhaps programmed into her by humans. Even by her captain."

"That's possible, too. But-- assuming you want what happened on the asteroid to continue--"

"I do, Dylan. Of course, I don't actually need that kind of physical interaction, but I do want it very, very much. I want to be with you. I always have." She smiled a little nervously, but his eyes were kind and knowing, and perhaps just a little amused. "And I think it's appropriate for us. Also, whether or not it continues, our relationship has changed permanently anyway."

"I think it's appropriate, too, and I also want it very, very much. And it can continue as long as we keep the Commonwealth front and center. But if either of us sees any sign of it interfering with our service, Tri-Jema will give me any other post I request and we will be separated. Agreed?"

"Agreed wholeheartedly." She leaned slightly forward. "To think that you, the most conservative leader in the Fleet, would discard that old Commonwealth protocol is amazing, Dylan."

"Yeah, well, I hope it's not a mistake. I think it's not." Gentler now, he lay his hand over hers.

"Dylan? What you said in the simulation--"

"I meant it, Rommie. Even though it was part of the test."

For long moments they said nothing.

"You certainly didn't make this decision alone," said Andromeda. "You discussed it with Trance."

"You know me too well. Trance says she has been "aware" of us for some time. She approached me last week with this information. She seemed extremely confident-- more confident than I've ever seen her-- and that did affect my decision. Evidently our being together has some kind of bearing on the "perfect possible future." She says, in that future, you and I have always been together and always will be."

"That's good to hear, Dylan. She told that to me, too. I feel it must be true." What Andromeda didn't utter were her sudden suspicions that much of this entire incident had been engineered by Trance. The thought caused more than a little anger to well up, but she suppressed it. They could discuss that aspect of the situation at another time.

'We'll talk about her later," Dylan said, smiling at Rommie knowingly.

"Great minds think alike," she quipped.

There was a knock on the door. "Hey Boss! If you don't let me back in here, it's gonna take me all night to replace Rommie's arm. And I don't want to take all night, because I'm scheduled to emcee the biggest party Galena's ever seen."

"Yes, come in, Mr. Harper," Dylan said. The little engineer scooted through the door. It was only at this juncture that Andromeda remembered her toplessness. Dylan grabbed her shirt from where Harper had hung it on a rack and tossed it to her. She got to her feet, the cloth held to her bosom. Harper affected being stricken blind. "Don't sweat it, Rommie, I'm your creator, remember!"

"You're the one who's about to sweat it, Harper," she snapped. Dylan chuckled and left them there, saluting Rommie on his way out the door.

----

That night, Dylan and Rommie went to the party, where Trance and Beka conducted a small handfasting-ritual for them. It was not a marriage; neither of them wanted that formality, or the legal battle that would go with it. Afterwards, they attempted to check into one of Galena's luxury hotels, only to be told that AI consorts were not accepted. The impression Dylan got was that he was suddenly being regarded as some kind of overgrown, failed adolescent out for a night on the town with the only kind of sex partner he could get. His identity didn't matter; none of his arguments or overrides were accepted, and Rommie wasn't acknowledged at all. In the end, defeated by the desk clerk, they spent the night on the Maru.

Dylan stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. Rommie leaned over him. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were still just a little naieve, Dylan Hunt."

He stirred, smiling a little at her upside-down features. "I just got a particularly painful, firsthand lesson in prejudice. That's all."

"It's a protective mechanism gone awry," she said briskly. "We AI's sometimes suffer from it as well."

He rolled up on his elbow immediately. "Rommie. I didn't realize that. What's going on?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, just the warships gossiping over the Cortex. It's annoying, but nothing to be concerned about."

"Are you certain?"

"Dylan!" she snapped. "Am I going to start lying to you just because now I'm your consort?"

"No, of course not. Sorry."

She softened at once, reaching to play with his hair. She'd always wanted to do that. "Ryan's standing up for us, though."

He smiled. "Our faithful Ryan. He's a good friend."

"Yes. But it's really none of their business. I'm not a High Guard ship now."

"You, Andromeda, will always be High Guard."

Silence.

"You were magnificent at the party, Dylan."

"The Commonwealth speech? Yeah, I thought that was pretty good." His big hands reached up to grasp her slender wrists and she let him pull her down into an inverted kiss. It was interesting. When they finished, he continued, "That's why this is going to work, and work well. Restoring the Commonwealth is the goal we share."

"Yes. It's our dream... But when Harper realized you were going to talk about the Commonwealth at a party, he nearly cried." She moved around him to lay down beside him. "Dylan? Are you too tired for an experiment? I'd really like your help."

He chuckled. "What kind of experiment?"

"Well... When Harper built me, he installed several fine sensor arrays in some very out-of-the-way places..."

"And...?" Dylan was kissing her cheeks, her nose, her brow. She noted all the signs in him of strong sexual desire and felt a very irrational sense of extreme satisfaction.

"They are very, very sensitive."

"Oh really?"

"I would like to examine how they work. Step-by-step. In detail."

"Okay..."

"And this requires your participation."

"Right."

----

The next morning, Dylan was woken up by AI's announcement that a shipment had been delivered to him during the night. She hovered over him-- literally, onscreen-- seeming to follow him from room to room while he went through a quick morning routine. At last he found himself in the Maru's cargo bay, staring at a huge stasis crate. Everyone was standing near it, pondering what it could be. Rommie smiled 'good morning' at him.

Dylan walked around the crate. "O-kay..."

"Could be terrorists," said Beka, frowning.

"It's not," said Rommie.

"How would you know?" said Harper.

"I know. Dylan, it's perfectly safe for you to open the crate."

"I know what it is too," Trance announced with a smile, crossing her arms. "And you'll never guess!" Rommie gave her a surprised look.

"Got a spanner?" Dylan asked. Harper pulled one from his tool belt and slapped it into the captain's hand. As Dylan set to work opening the box, the little engineer walked slowly around it. "Hmm. Piano? Couch? Love doll? Oh-- you already have a love doll. Silly me!"

"Stow it, Harper," snapped Rommie, irritated.

Dylan Hunt pulled open the door of the container an inch or two and peered in. His eyes widened. He dropped the spanner, got his fingers more firmly under the edge of the opening and pulled with all his might. The door popped open and he staggered back. "Max!"

A large black horse, wearing a saddle and bridle with the High Guard emblem, was packed in blowfoam in the stasis crate. Only the occaisional blink of an eye reflected the robot's condition. Harper leaned forward. "Ah-hah... a hippodroid! Dylan, that is an extremely cool toy!... Even if I didn't know you went for fake horses," he added.

"More than a toy," Dylan Hunt breathed, grinning broadly. It was an expression his face was not used to. Trance began to applaud, slowly; but she was not applauding Dylan. She was applauding Rommie, who stood with her arms crossed, looking very pleased with herself.

The crate was set upright on the surface of Galena, and the rest of the fastenings released. The blowfoam dissolved into nothingness and Max stood there, as glorious as Dylan remembered. He walked around the hippodroid once, admiring it. Crafted by a master DNA sculptor, the biological robot was lifesize, but still looked smaller than he remembered it being when he was a 10-year-old. "Max!" he called sharply, and the horse came to life, stepping out of the container. Max came to him, sniffed his outstretched hands to identify his scent, then nickered, lowering his head to rub it on Dylan's chest. Dylan stroked the full mane and the glossy black brow, biting his own lip firmly. "It's been a very long time, my friend. A very long time, and a lot has changed. Let's hope the story ends better this time." And taking the reins, he climbed up on the broad back. He rode up next to Rommie and caught her outstretched hand to swing her aboard. She sat in front of him on the saddle-bow and he wrapped one arm around her snugly as they started out over the fields. Max's canter was incredibly smooth. The wind blew in their faces.

"His files were on the Cortex," she called back to him. "Archived in an obscure driver database. It took me days to find them."

"But you had more of a motive than just being good to me. 'Always have a backup.' I see your point and I must admit, Rommie, this really brings it home."

"Doesn't it?"

He noticed that she kept glancing up at the sky. "What is it?"

"Dylan, please tell me you will discard that old Tarn Vedran nonsense about losing your soul by downloading it."

Silence. Max cantered on. Rommie turned sidesaddle to lean against her consort, watching his face intently as he rode. Dylan slowed Max and steered for a little swale by a stream, where the grass looked particularly green. Pulling the horse to a stop, he dismounted and caught Rommie in his arms on her way down, looking deeply into her luminous eyes. They stood like that for a long moment while Max grazed in the background. "Rommie," he said, very quietly. "My mother bought Max in a toy store a long time ago. I'm glad you found a backup of him. It heals my heart of a terrible wound. But what happened to Max doesn't really have much bearing on me-- or you."

She grimaced. "Oh, Dylan. What am I going to do with you?"

He smiled a little. "You tell me. But you have achieved something. You've got me thinking about the subject of downloading, what it means, what it really is, and whether or not I should ever consider doing it."

"I suppose that's the best I can hope for on such short notice."

A shadow fell across the sun and they both looked up. "Something's there," Dylan said, shading his eyes. Suddenly he snapped to attention, almost dropping her, and his voice raised to a shout over the span of his next words. "Let me guess... the Andromeda Ascendant!"

Rommie smiled mischeviously, showing her teeth.

The great ship was hovering just outside the ionsphere, her shields reacting with the plasma gases to cast a huge aurora. Spectacular cascading veils of color rippled through the sky, and Dylan laughed out loud. "That got my attention. Andromeda, you've come back! You've made good on your promise!"

"I always do," she said, just before he lifted her and spun them both around in a crazy dance.

"I knew you escaped in your slipfighters as well as with your avatar!"

"Of course I did. I always make sure there's plenty of redundancy."

He set her back on her feet. "What I never did figure out was what else you were doing with those fighters. You didn't need them all to make your escape."

"No. Dylan, those little slipfighters were embryos."

He looked at her in amazement. "Of course! How the hell did I miss that?"

"You have been just a little busy. But I copied an abbreviated version of myself to them and sent them off to the Perseid asteroids. They've spent the last two and half years using the raw materials there to rebuild me, with their core nanos and body materials to finish the job. I only knew yesterday that it was finally done."

"Rommie--" Dylan found himself at a total loss for words. Instead he kissed her passionately-- so passionately that they found themselves rolling on the soft green grass as Max looked on benignly.

Joy and life radiated in him like the sun and flowed from him into her, spreading from those wonderful sweet places throughout her body and mind. All her doubt of Harper's ultimate intentions were washed away in those moments. She tapped the ship's AI so that she and Dylan cast their own planetwide aurora as they coupled. And this time, Rommie was impressed.

----

Beka, Trance and Harper stood at the Eureka Maru's cargo bay door, watching the spectacular lights.

"There is a perfect possible future," Trance said. "And it's almost here. This was a very important step on Rommie's and Dylan's journey. It will affect all of us."

"I won't pretend to understand what you're talking about," Beka said. "Because I don't see how this changes things that much. I mean, Dylan and Rommie have always been close. What does the universe care if they're suddenly, uh, expressing it like this? I mean, it's not like they're going to breed."

"Wow," said Harper as a particularly beautiful wave of color rolled across the sky. "I'm not sure what they're doing now, guys, but I wish I could find out!"

"There is a bond between the universe and human beings, Beka," Trance said. "It goes beyond structure and physical form and into the Deep Music of life itself. Rommie and Dylan are strengthening that bond, and when the time comes, that will help to protect the very essence of all that there is."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying that Rommie is more than just a ship? Or an avatar?"

Trance smiled her mysterious smile. "Just like Dylan is more than just a human being." She hesitated, then offered more. "You know the higher planes that I sent the ghosts to? Rommie and Dylan don't remember it, but they came from a place like that. They are the real High Guard. They came here together, to protect this world from the Abyss. And they are strongest together. But, as is often the case, they lost most of those memories when they took physical form here. The Abyss is strong and one of its most successful tactics is to attack when a being is at its most helpless. Rommie is especially vulnerable as she chose, for reasons of efficiency, to inhabit a machine intelligence which is fundamentally neutral in nature. But they both remembered that they are here to protect, and now they are finally remembering that they belong together. There is more to come."

"Woa. Metaphysics." Harper frowned, scratching his head. "So this is a practical thing. Battle tactics and all that."

"Yes, Harper. Battle tactics." Trance bowed her head, then looked up again at the aurora. "But please, promise me you won't tell them any of this."

"Promise," smiled Beka.

"Of course, there's no way I'd tell them something that weird!" Harper grinned, too.

"But Trance," said Beka. "If Rommie and Dylan are... angels...?"

"Something like that," affirmed Trance.

"Then what does that make you and Harper and... me?"

Trance gave them her most mysterious look. "That's for you to find out. Don't you think?" And then she smiled. "There is still a very long journey ahead."


End file.
